18/06/2026
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BUT MUCHTAR
(1930 - 1993, Indonesian)
"Love Beneath the Sun"
painted in 1965
oil on canvas
100 x 100 cm
Provenance: Former Indonesian diplomat for Australia in 1970s.
But Mochtar received training under the tutelage of Ries Mulder, a Dutch educator and painter at the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). He continued his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Sculpture Center of New York, where he displayed an interest in a variety of sculptural styles that ranged from figurative to abstraction.
"Love Beneath the Sun" is built around an act of pure love. A mother reclines in full, unhurried surrender, her body a softly fractured architecture of warmth and trust as she nurses her child. Her legs extend outward across the lower register of the canvas, stretching gently yet deliberately toward the great red orb above โ the sun, blazing and benevolent โ as if offering herself, and by extension her child, to its light and benediction. Mother, child, and sun form an unbroken triangle of sustenance: each nourishing the other in quiet, eternal reciprocity.
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